Riding on the laurels of the very interesting Unpopular Opinions thread by @prototypeOEZ, I’m going to start that other thread. There are rules simple:
Ill start it off simple
Umineko is a masterpiece.
Sayo Yasuda is one of, if not the single most wonderfully complex character I’ve ever seen, and I love her very much.
(yeah, I know spoiler tags aren’t strictly required, but oh well)
I would argue a bit about that female pronoun though. Especially considering the backstory.
But that’s what she identifies with the most. Like Willard says in episode 7, that question lies outside the gameboard, so we are in no position to argue about that.
This being an opinion thread merely needs you to express your belief. I’m going to go with Yasu was born a dude.
I was never going to challenge that. It’s my thinking as well, given her worries. I was just objecting to adjusting the pronouns according to that biological gender. Admittedly, I did the same thing for a short amount of time after Lion got introduced, but after a while felt like an ass for going against her identity and would love to just erase all my posts in which I did. Since identy is such a large part of her story, sticking to the identities and their genders she applies herself is just both less troublesome and less disrespectful.
But oh well, you want popular opinions I share… oddly enough I can only state such opinions in a way of denying unpopular theories
You did a good breakdown, but the narrative itself tells that the Kanon persona is the one Yasu feels more comfortable with, if I am to remind myself from EP7’s Theater segment.
That’s why it would still be arguable in many instances. At the point I would either modify the phrase to give emphasis to Yasu per se without pronouns, or leave Yasu’s original sex as being the main point of reference (although even that was only “heavily implied” to be male).
Mmh…
I can’t remember any instance in which it is said Yasu feels more comfortable being Kanon, both in the Manga and the VN. I just remember that line from Willard in the manga, in which he says quite clearly that the question about her true gender identity died with her and I’ve re-read that line just two months ago. Therefore I am genuinely confused from which context you take that.
And regarding your proposal of a compromise… Yasu without pronouns the same way Lion is treated would go. But I think ‘she’ is similarly applicable because Yasu is just a short-hand for Sayo Yasuda, which is the name with which she was raised and she was firmly comfortable identifying as female up until puberty. But it’s not like she ever identified herself as male from then on, she was obviously just in a constant state of confusion that made it hard for her to decide. She “tried out” being male (that’s how Kanon is described within the text, an experiment after she found out), but it is kinda noticeable that Shannon always won in their struggles and above them, Beatrice is considered her dominant personality.
Okay… all I’m saying is that the case isn’t as clear-cut as you make it sound like. I think it would be just far less of a hassle to simply use the pronouns she herself uses within the story and be fine with it. We shouldn’t presume to know that she would have preferred her biological gender if she had been raised differently, because… well, the answer died along with her, sadly enough.
I’m not saying my words are absolute either, just that anything would be arguable, just like you said. It’s such a complex character in all the ways I could describe as, we would just be days and more days debating about it without really reaching conclusive arguments imo, we better just leave it at that and maybe continue said discussion in given character respective thread in Rokkenjima, if there’s one already.
Now now, not to derail this thread with the secondary matter at hand, I better state in my next comment my opinion accordingly.
Umineko is probably the most complex metafictional work I’ve have ever read in my life.
There are just so many layers to it, all of them being masterfully used, I just feel like anything past it that tries the same approach is just a lesser-in-scale-Umineko itself.
Heck, even early works are that compared to Umineko, besides them potentially being direct inspiration factors to the work in hand, like “La Divina Comedia” is, for example.
Yasu’s gender: It’s hard to grasp R07’s opinion about gender and sexuality, so some things are kinda up to speculation, I suppose. Personally I consider Beato and Shannon females and Kanon male. I think Beato and Shannon are her preferred personas, but I don’t think she would have minded living as Kanon given the chance. And I think in a world in which wasn’t throw off a cliff she wouldn’t have minded living as Lion Ushiromiya in her original body.
Personally I think Yasu’s original stories are mysteries with magic in it but no meta. I can’t see the stories having any meta, especially taking in consideration the later-series development (Tohya for some reason decides to make Beatrice suicidal in episode 4 and then writes stuff like Ep. 7 in which he essentially tortures Beatrice further?) Meta only makes sense to me if it is its own realm, separated by the stories but influenced by them (or other way around). Meta-Battler and Meta-Beato are the souls of Battler and Beatrice, stuck in the world of the catbox Beatrice created with Lambda’s powers.
I mean, from what I recall, Confession all but confirms it, no? Sayo Yasuda/Lion Ushiromiya was born male,
and I’m of the opinion that Lion as we see him in Ep7 is male as well. Sayo, on the other hand, is raised as a girl - of her personas and characters, most of them are female - Shannon, Gaap, Clair, Beato - while there are only two male characters (Kanon and Ronove). There’s a panel in Confession where Sayo’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt and looks at herself in the mirror, then smashes it and cries when she notices how flat her chest is - that’s a pretty strong indicator to me that Sayo - that is to say, her “base identity” - is a woman. A trans woman, yes, but a woman all the same.
Lets try another line of opinions:
Best ship for Keichi is Mion
Well… I wanted to start my counterargument by saying how Fantasy and Purgatory in Episode 2 are already interconnected, but when I remember correctly, this happened only towards the end and you could easily claim that Yasu’s original Episode 2 ended with Piece!Battler being humiliated and torn apart by the goats after the clock struck twelve and that the ‘dinner’ with Rosa and its subsequent crashing by Meta-Battler is a forgery. It’s still a massive tonal shift from “This will be neverending torture!” to “Beelze stole my croissant!” even within the purgatory scenes of episodes 2 and 3, that make it hard to believe that this is anything Tohya planned in advance, but I can’t make a decisive argument based on textual evidence and must also admit, that the story still kinda works under that premise. All I can do is point out the thematic significance and say that it would hurt the story quite a bit if the Purgatory was not thought up by Yasu, but maybe that’s more of a personal opinion after all.
At least for me, one of the most decisive revelations was the realization that the game between Beato and Battler had always been nothing but a cry for help. That every time Beatrice demanded to be acknowledged, she actually wanted to be found, to be understood, and to be accepted.
Working under the premise that the purgatory was thought up by Yasu means working under the premise that Yasu must have realized that her murder mysteries would never lead to someone truly understanding her. All it would take to defeat her would be to suspect the right person, point at her and everything would be over. That’s why she created the purgatory, invoking the game she used to play with Battler, the game in which he caught a glimpse upon the true Yasu, and introducing a Red Truth that points neither on Shannon nor Kanon, but at Yasu herself and therefore needs true understanding in order to be used to strike down Beatrice. Since Yasu’s creations always tend to grow a life of their own, it is not too much of a stretch to think that she expanded her narrative in order to satisfy her true aims, even if that only meant that she saw no possibility at all to be truly understood in this roullette in real life. Tohya’s forgeries would then be there to continue where Yasu left off, to give closure to what she started, nothing more, nothing less.
If you approach the story under the premise that none of this was anything Yasu intended, then quite a bit of thematic shift sets in. It is suddenly less a story about Yasu wanting to be understood and more a story about Tohya adding motives that weren’t initially there to portray her in a better light.
Is that really what I want Umineko to be?
Hehe, agreed! May I be allowed to expand?
I am always shipping under the premise of who needs whom the most and here I just have to side with Mion’s family, all of whom are supporting that relationship anyway. Mion may be the most moral and upstanding of the characters at the moment, but in the long run this whole ‘heir of the evil yakuza clan’ thing threatens to consume her. When she had to don her merciless face in the Eyes Opening arc to punish Shion, it was utterly terrifying! And the way she self-mutilated herself afterwards as repentance is telling enough about just how much it destroys her.
That’s why I simply think that having Keiichi with his fate-defying motivational speeches at her side, may it is a friend, but even better as a constant partner, is just the kind of anchor she needs to not go down the path Oryouu did and get consumed by that merciless facade.
At least that’s why I’d like to see the two get together, and apparently not only the Sonozakis, but Ryukishi07 himself agree! 
Sorry, Rena. You may be the series mascot, but I’m confident you can find your own path regardless of whether you hook up with Keiichi or not. 
Here’s a simple one:
The music in all of the 07th works is fantastic, especially in Umineko.
Keichi x Rena forever m8 (A bit of a bias as Rena is best girl for me)